The Problematic Trend of Squishy Truth

Jan 2, 2014

RUSH: Brad in San Diego next. Great to have you on the program, Brad. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for having me on.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: I heard something on the radio last week on what I listen to, KFI, and apparently people who have suddenly lost their insurance are going on to the dot-gov website to see about other plans that were available. They put their information in to get to the level where they could do a review, and decided not to buy anything, then that information was apparently released to independent sales reps —

RUSH: Oh, yeah.

CALLER: — call people —

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: As a doctor, we’re required by the HIPAA law to keep all this information very protected.

CALLER: Exactly. Well, it’s $250,000 penalty per event because it was related to insurance. So the people whose insurance information or protected information was released, should look into how they should pursue that.

RUSH: Well, you know, this was one of the first things people learned about — when HealthCare.gov went live. By the way, have you heard of the latest in this? The Regime is saying, “We never said seven million sign-ups was our target. We never said that!” You know, life is easy if you can lie. If you can lie about everything, and nobody ever calls you on it and you get away with it, life is easy — and this is what they do.

Obama lied for three years. “You get to keep your doctor if you like him! You get to keep your insurance if you like it!” No, you didn’t. Obama said, “No, I didn’t say that. I said, ‘If nothing changes in your policy you get to keep it.'” He did not say that. He promised, “If you like your plan, you get to keep it. Period.” The White House health care website still makes that promise. There are senators, I think Mary Landrieu. Maybe not her.

So somebody said, “Well, wait, you said you needed seven million.” And they’re saying, “No, we didn’t.” But they did. It’s on tape, it’s in print, but they’re just denying it. “We didn’t say seven million! Nobody ever said seven million.” And, in a political sense, the Republicans don’t know what to do with this. Do you know how to deal with a liar? It is a challenging thing to deal with a liar. But these people, this is a political party that just lies as a matter of course.

The problem with it is that the impressionable low-information people who vote for them believe all these lies, and then they create lives, circumstances, based on a series of lies. And then standards begin to crumble, and then promises mean nothing, and then honor and integrity come to mean nothing, and then standards don’t exist. And then there’s nothing accountable and nothing anybody can depend on. So there aren’t any guardrails — and that’s where we are, in many ways, in our culture.

Let me give you an example. Let me use a football example. Let me find the story. I don’t know how many of you — and I gotta be very, very careful about this. ‘Cause this is one of these things where if I am not careful (by “careful,” I mean really being detailed because this is the kind of thing), a lot of people would love to take me out of context. It involves Peyton Manning of the Denver Broncos and the passing yardage record. “Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning will remain as the leagueÂ’s single-season record holder for passing yards.”

In the last game of the season, Peyton Manning only played one half. He was taken out after setting the record. The pass that broke the record was a seven-yard pass to the Broncos receiver Eric Decker, and that seven-yard completion gave Peyton Manning the single season record for passing yardage in the NFL, breaking the record held by Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints. Now, because the in-house, press box, stadium statisticians gave manning the record, the Broncos sat him down in the second half, and he didn’t play anymore.

Had he played the second half, he would have racked up even more passing yardage, by default. He’s gonna complete passes in the second half if he plays, but he didn’t. Well, it turns out that some people thought that that seven yard pass that gave him the record wasn’t a forward pass, that it was a lateral. So they looked at it on videotape. They looked at it on a series of still shots taken from the videotape.

If you looked at it you would conclude (like a number of other people in the media concluded) that it was not a forward pass, that it in fact was a pass backwards by one yard. I have looked at it over and over, looked at it on the way back home yesterday, last night, and it looked to… I mean, countless times. This is not a criticism of Peyton Manning. It’s really not a criticism of anybody specific here. I have a much larger point that I’m trying to get to here, but I gotta set up the details and circumstance.

I didn’t see the game. I didn’t watch the game. I only became aware of this when others in the sports media began to question whether or not it was a forward pass. Well, the official statistician of the NFL is the Elias Sports Bureau… The Elias Sports Bureau is the final word on statistics in the NFL, and the Elias Sports Bureau was given this play to look at, and they decided not to change it. The play will remain as a completion, and Peyton Manning will hold the record after further review.

But, it was a backward pass. Again, forget that Peyton Manning’s even involved here. This is not with Peyton Manning. I have no opinion. If he sets the record or not, it’s not of any consequence to me. I’m not a Peyton Manning fan and I don’t dislike him or any of that. To me, this is about standards and controversy and the avoidance, and it may be, in the big scheme of things, a minor point. But I think there’s a whole lot of little things like this going on that portend big problems in our culture.

Because what it adds up to is what’s right isn’t right, what’s wrong isn’t wrong. It’s what somebody wants something to be that is. Now, it could well be that the Elias people are figuring, “You know what? We don’t want to be involved in this. They said at the stadium it’s a forward pass, and we’re not gonna be the ones to take the record away from Peyton Manning. It ain’t gonna fall down on us.” So maybe they said, “Okay, it ain’t gonna be us.” So they leave it alone.

Or it could be that somebody at the Elias Sports Bureau said, “Well, you know, okay, the in-house statisticians blew it, but it happened real fast. They didn’t have the benefit of replay to look at it. You can fix this any time, but Peyton would have played in the second half if this had been ruled a lateral and he hadn’t set the record on this play. They would have played him the second half and he would have broken the record.

“So we’re gonna go ahead and count this. Even though he didn’t break it, he would have broken it.” But he didn’t. Now, there are mitigating circumstances. Actually he did, because they said he did. Now, the Pittsburgh Steelers were denied a playoff spot because the referees in the San Diego-Kansas City game blew a huge infraction on the Chargers. Now, let’s take these two things. The Chargers had an illegal formation when the Chiefs kicked a field goal that woulda won the game against the Chargers.

It’s the last game of the season, four seconds left, and the kicker for the Chiefs missed it wide right by inches. There should have been a flag thrown because the Chargers had more than six men lined up to the right of the center. You can only have six men lined up on either side of the center in a kicking formation, field goal or extra point. The Chargers had seven. This rule was put in place for safety, so there wouldn’t be as many concussions, wouldn’t be as much brutality, wouldn’t be as much unfairness.

Putting seven guys up against five, it’s unfair, it’s brutish. We’re not gonna do this. So they put the rule in, and the Chargers broke the rule. The refs didn’t call it, and the kicker missed the kick. Had the refs called the penalty that had been a five-yard penalty and the 41-yard field goal would be attempted again from 36 yards where the field goal kicker would have had a better chance of making the field goal.

Now, why, in this case, didn’t they go ahead and say, “Well, you know what? The kicker woulda made the kick”? If they’re saying, “Well, Peyton would have broken the record in the second half, because he would have played if they hadn’t counted the seven yard pass as a forward pass, and therefore seven yards and he breaks the record, he would have played,” well, I mean, the kicker woulda made the kick. (interruption) I’m not… (interruption)

No. (interruption)I couldn’t care less about this. The Steelers didn’t deserve to be in the playoffs anyway. It’s not the point, Mr. Snerdley. Snerdley’s saying I’m doing Steeler homerism. I’m not. Folks, I’m worried about this. We’re becoming mooshy, squishy as a culture. Camille Paglia has written about this extensively. There’s a great piece on what she thinks about this. It’s the Wall Street Journal. I’ve got here in the Stack.

Her piece is about manliness and how we’re diminishing it in our culture for all the wrong reasons and we’re gonna have many problems as a result of getting rid of manliness and so forth. It’s all being done in the interest of parents and not offending people, and War on Women and all this specious stuff. To me, there are absolutes, but since absolutes offend people, we’re gonna water down the absolutes. We’re just gonna take the easy road. Doesn’t offend anybody.

That doesn’t upset anybody, doesn’t cause any controversy, and we’ll just do that. And, I’m telling you, in the process of doing this, it’s a slow, cumulative effect. It’s been going on awhile. This is not the beginning of this. Such things as, “Well, we’re gonna penalize that kid’s team 55 points at the start ’cause they’re just so much better, and the other team doesn’t even have a prayer. So that team’s gonna start minus 35.”

Or, “We’re just not gonna keep score because we don’t want to humiliate the losers.” Or, “We’re not gonna give A’s anymore since not everybody can get A’s. We’re just gonna give everybody the same grade so that there isn’t any humiliation,” or whatever it is that we’re doing. But, in the process here, what is absolute is being diluted. What is right and what is wrong is being diluted, watered down, blurred.

In the end, you end up lying to yourself. You end up believing you’ve done something when you haven’t done it — or, conversely, you didn’t do something that you think you did. All of this troubles me, what’s happening with the left just lying about everything — and the thing is that their acolytes, their low-information voters, they believe this stuff. It is a an ongoing problem, and it’s creating not just ignorance.

It’s creating a bunch of people who are dead wrong about things they fervently believe they’re right about. Anyway, this is one of the things I told you before I left. I’ve been developing trying to come up with cogent ways to explain what it is about this kind of thing that’s troubling me, and I’m gonna have to keep working on it. I think it’s a big deal. It has horrible consequences for our culture down the road that we’re already seeing the ramifications of now.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The thing that troubles me here, folks, is that we are dumbing down every standard, every rule — and the problem with this is: How can there ever be excellence or real merit, when the standards are constantly being eroded? Maybe it’s nothing new. Maybe it’s something going on ever since the beginning of time. I’m sure it is. I just don’t believe it’s been happening on this scale.

If kids can’t read when they graduate, graduate ’em anyway. If they can’t pass their final to graduate, lower the standards. If somebody can’t pass a test to become a fireman, lower the standard. Too dumb to get into college? Lower the standard and raise the price. People too fat to be accepted in the military? Change the standard. We’re dumbing everything down, and it’s not gonna end well.

Because how can there really be excellence or even any real merit when there’s an asterisk by every achievement, which is where we’re headed. Then you couple that with the assault on achievement that is taking place in much of our culture and society, and it’s problematic. But the worst part is you end up lying to yourself, and you end up teaching the lesson that getting close is the same thing to accomplishing something, when it isn’t.